Former Spanish President Mariano Rajoy appeared again before a high court investigating events that occurred during his mandate. It was the Congressional commission of inquiry into the Catalonia operation and the dirty war of the Spanish state against the Catalan independence movement. In previous cases he had testified before another Congressional commission, for the Kitchen corruption plot; before the National Court, for the Gürtel corruption scandal, and before the Supreme Court, in the trial against the leaders of the Proceso. In all cases he has done the same: claim complete ignorance of what he is being asked, although in all cases it concerns facts directly related to his functions as a senior leader of the Popular Party or as President of the Spanish government. He knows nothing, he was just passing by. Imbued with the character that he himself has decided to project in public (a rancid and absent-minded gentleman who could be in some Alfonso Paso farce, like The Extremadurans touch each other either Teach a scoundrel) and that public opinion, and especially the media, decided to buy him some time ago, he lets out a few ironic remarks, he puts on airs, he pretends to be a little annoyed for having gotten in the way, and that's enough. In this absurd way he goes through the days and the appearances, without having to assume, for the moment, responsibility for anything that happened while he was in the political front line. Everyone finds it very funny, and now that he has reminded Rufián about the 155 coins, he has even managed to make many of the independentists he ordered beaten on October 1st laugh (he also declared that he had neither ordered nor known anything about the police charges of that day).
Despite the terrible relationship they always had, Rajoy was basically a continuator of Aznar's policies, except that Rajoy had fewer pretensions as a savior of the country and none as an international statesman. He was better at dealing with corruption schemes, off-balance sheet accounting, black boxes and deferred payments. The nostalgia for better times, without so many feminists, so many environmentalists, so many LGTBIQ+ groups and so many leftists who are not exactly like Alfonso Guerra or Felipe González, also accompanies him.
But Rajoy has not had to answer for his corruption or the abuses perpetrated by the Ministry of the Interior during the years it was led by Jorge Fernández Díaz and Juan Ignacio Zoido. From the massacre of immigrants in Tarajal to the patriotic police against the separatists and the fabrication of false evidence that was later published by the media (from the everlasting right to the also patriotic left), from the failure of negotiations with Mas and Puigdemont to the application of Article 155 in a coup. Rajoy has so far emerged from all this with occasional appearances in a tone of comic relief. The consequences are paid by the rule of law and the citizens.
